All my heroes are dead and gone…
…killed by bad writing.
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant, shining star of a show called Heroes. Heroes tried to explore how people might really behave/react if they suddenly acquired super powers. Anyway, I do not take it upon myself to try to give you the entire premise and backstory of the show. No, I am here to rant about how bad the writing got and about glaring inconsistancies and torturous plot holes that never, ever got explained. Verily, the writers never tried.
Here are just a couple that I’d like to point out.
#1 This is the biggest for me. In the first season, the ‘boss’ bad guy was Mr. Linderman. His power was to heal others. Well, he dies at the end of the season. At the end of season 2, one of the main characters, Nathan, is shot. So at the beginning of season 3, he’s taken to the hospital, hovers near death, yadda, yadda, yadda. All of the sudden, we see Linderman is back! Whoa! He heals Nathan and is a recurring character for several episodes. Then we learn that it really isn’t Linderman, it’s a character who has telepathy powers, including planting thoughts in the minds of others. This whole affair is important to the story the writers are trying to tell. But they never go back to explain how Nathan healed! It’s like the success of the show depended on viewers not paying attention! Crimeny!
#2 A popular character from season 2 is Adam. We meet Adam back in feudal Japan. His power is that he heals from pretty much any wound. This also allows him to live for centuries, maybe longer. In season 3, Adam has lived long enough to be in the present day. Ok. The big bad boss man in season 2 is Arthur Petrelli, father of Nathan. Arthur’s power is to steal/take for himself the powers of others. But Arthur has been lying in a hospital bed for a couple of years, on a ventilator. Adam is brought before Arthur, and Arthur takes Adam’s healing power. Which causes Adam to crumble to dust due to extreme age. Later in the season, there’s an eclipse which takes away the powers of all the Heroes (and Villains). You see, it’s sort of implied from the beginning of the series that an eclipse is the way that people got powers in the first place. So the eclipse giveth, and the eclipse taketh away. Silly to begin with, but whatever.
So, my question is, why didn’t Adam crumble to dust during any of the hundreds of eclipses over the past several hundred years??? Again, the writers must think that we the viewers are complete idiots!
I have more, but I’m too disgusted to continue.
Ciao.
Friendships do sometimes end
A couple of years ago, a woman named Alyssa came to work at MJC in the Financial Aid Department. Alyssa and I became good friends. Our friendship grew at first through numerous daily phone calls and email messages; later through much time spent together. It was a platonic relationship but a uniquely special one. Alyssa had a boyfriend, John whom I got to know, and he and I got along well. I spent many hours at Alyssa’s house. I got to know her family and in particular her sister, Kaleena. I would flirt outrageously with Kaleena but just in fun. Neither of us had any interest in the other. Weekly dinners, time spent with each other running errands, shared work environments all contributed to my friendship with Alyssa.
Although we had this great friendship, one should not be misled into thinking that there were no points on which we disagreed. There are two points that are germane to this story. Early on in our friendship, Alyssa told me that she did not believe that friendships should be work. We argued gently about this a time or two but there it was. The second thing that bears on this story is that I have a pattern or tendency to not do a very good job with long distance friendships. I have had several good friends that have moved away at the height of our friendship. Though there was a bit of effort in the beginning to maintain the friendship, it has always faded as our lives go on, now on separate tracks. I do not like this reality but I accept it. Alyssa, Kaleena, and many other people claim to be able to pick right up where they left off when they have the opportunity to see their old/distant friends. I do not possess this ability. I have a finite capacity for relationships.
So, a year ago, Alyssa decides to quit her job at MJC and move to the Bay Area to live with John. This was a very sad thing for me to have to accept. At the same time, Kaleena had announced that she was moving to Los Angeles to live with her boyfriend. To me, this effectively signaled the end of our friendships, at least the active friendships. Alyssa was my connection to her sister and the rest of her family, and with her gone, I no longer had a connection. Kaleena was also moving away and truth be told, she had never been much for reciprocating the effort that I put in to be her friend.
So neither Alyssa, nor Kaleena, nor I have really put any effort into communicating with each other since then. I’ve emailed Alyssa a couple of times and received replies but they are essentially meaningless. Kaleena ended up not moving out of town and as it turns out, it wasn’t at all important to tell me that. I always felt with her like I was the one putting in all the effort. I’d actually decided to stop to see what would happen and very predictably, I never heard from her. A couple of times, Kaleena would include me in the distribution list for a mass email she was sending out. Not exactly the personal touch but it was something. Upon receiving one of these emails from her, I would immediately respond with an offer to get together. For whatever reason, we never did. Until this last week.
She sent out one of her mass emails and I responded with an inquiry about when we might get together. After a couple of false starts, we ended up meeting at the Queen Bean on Sunday evening. The first minute or two of conversation was awkward. So much for her alleged ability to pick up right where things left off. Then she launches into a “why haven’t I or Alyssa heard from you?” She accuses me of not putting in any effort.
Let me tell you, I was pissed. The fracking phone rings both ways! My entire history with Kaleena was a one-sided effort on my part to be her friend. The only time she’d ever call me was when she needed something. Here’s an example: on Sunday she asked if I would be willing to go with her to a club here in town that caters toward an older crowd. Was she asking because she wanted to do something with me? No, no. She wants to go there to pick up on older guys and didn’t want to go alone. She would be very happy to ditch me if some sugar daddy happened along.
Anyway, as I read over this whole thing, it just looks stupid. Maybe it is stupid to have put this much thought/time into it, but it’s how I have felt and I won’t apologize for it. The reason I wrote this out is that I had posted somewhere that I had a good weekend until I saw Kaleena and one of my friends asked me about it. It would have been too hard to explain via text messages so I told him I’d post an entry to my blog about it.
Hope you enjoyed the story. 🙂
$1000 and 4 months down the drain
Well, here it is at the end of the term and time to reflect on my first semester as a junior. I really am a terrible student. I have no discipline and next to no motivation. My history class was interesting but I procrastinated way too long on the term paper and ran out of time. My research methods class was boring as can be, but easy. I should have been able to get an A in that class with very little effort. But apparently more effort than I was able to muster. I will be lucky if I pass that class. But a C appears possible.
Why am I such a failure at school? I am so lazy and as I said, undisciplined and unmotivated. I keep hoping that things will change but they never do. And neither do I.
I can see what needs to change. Why can’t I do it?
I suck.
No such thing as a dumb question? I beg to differ.
During the summer, MJC is closed on Fridays. To coincide with that, we employees move from a 5 days/8 hours schedule to a 4 days/10 hours. I hate it. At least I used to. I like the structure of going to work everyday and never knew what to do with myself on Fridays. Plus getting up early and coming home late left no time for anything in the evenings. I’ve softened my position somewhat. Now, instead of working 10 hours a day, I take 1-2 hours of vacation per day and keep a more normal schedule. I still don’t know what to do on Fridays but it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.
Begin rant.
So tonight is the annual Summer Sonata fundraiser dinner for the MJC Foundation. It’s at a new place this year so I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes. I attended a training Wednesday evening for all of us volunteers to hear what we’re going to do and how we’ll do it. It was a difficult meeting to sit through. I don’t know if there was a single question that needed to be asked. It was like every question was carefully crafted so as not to increase our knowledge or understanding once we heard the answer. For example, consider this question. “Will the serving trays that we use be rectangular or round?” It doesn’t matter what the answer is. Knowing the shape of the tray does not help us in the slightest. But the best question was, “What if there’s an emergency situation; will someone have a phone to call 911?” I actually think the question dumbfounded the room. There will be 300 people at the event that is being held at a residence in the middle of town. Do we really need to lock down on Wednesday who will have access to a phone? I doubt there was a single person in the room that does not have a mobile phone. I just find these kind of meetings to be such a collossal waste of time.
End rant.
